Ivy University is an educational institution that offers degrees in art, law, literature, pharmacology and sciences. It was the site of at least one murder. According to Wesley Stickler, the school's name was originally spelled "IV", as an acronym for "Intelligent" and "Valiant".

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One of the students at Ivy University, Dahlia Hawthorne, became a suspect in the Valerie Hawthornemurder case. Defense lawyer Diego Armando sat down with Hawthorne in the cafeteria of the university to question her. However, Hawthorne had stolen a poisonous substance from her boyfriend Doug Swallow, who was studying pharmacology at the university, and placed it in an inconspicuous bottle necklace. She then slipped a lethal dose of two teaspoons into Armando's coffee. The defense attorney lapsed into a deep coma from which he would not awaken for five years. Hawthorne realized she would be a prime suspect, as she had been sitting with Armando, so fled the scene into the library. There, she bumped into art student Phoenix Wright, and took the opportunity to dispose of the necklace by giving it to Wright as a "sign of love." Around this time, Swallow broke up with Hawthorne, suspecting what she had done.

For six months, Hawthorne had her twin sister Iris try without avail to get the necklace back from Wright, so as to dispose the incriminating evidence once-and-for-all. Hawthorne decided to take it by force and kill Wright. She stole more poison from Swallow's lab and slipped it into Wright's bottle of "Coldkiller X" cold medicine. Swallow, noticing that more poison had been stolen, suspected Hawthorne and tried to warn Wright. However, Wright would not listen and shoved Swallow onto the ground in a fit of anger. Hawthorne, realizing that Swallow was a danger to her plans, electrocuted him using a nearby high-voltage cable, silencing him once and for all and. Wright was arrested for the murder.

Wright hired the rookie attorney Mia Fey as his defense lawyer. Fey was able to get Hawthorne onto the stand and expose her lies and plots through clever cross-examination. When the necklace came into question, Wright made a last-ditch bid to protect his "Dollie" by eating the necklace, chain and all. Prosecutor Winston Payne tried to use this to discredit Fey's accusations, arguing that if the bottle really did contain deadly poison, Wright should be dead. However, Fey still had the poisoned bottle of cold medicine on hand, and made Payne back himself into a corner using one of his own claims, "I would trust my witnesses with my life!" As Payne was too cowardly to ingest the medicine lest it be poisoned, Fey once again had a case and was able to finally bring Hawthorne to justice.

Wesley Stickler was a student at Ivy University, and would regularly attend Trucy Wright's nearby Wonder Bar show. The main draw of the show was Trucy's "Magic Panties" act, in which she would pull several items out of a pair of seemingly empty panties. Stickler became obsessed over finding out how the panties worked. To this end, in 2026, he stole the panties from Trucy, who gave chase. Stickler was forced to duck into the nearby garage of Dr. Pal Meraktis, where he stuffed the panties in the exhaust pipe of Meraktis' sports car, to get rid of the evidence. He then made his escape.

However, he was not to be dissuaded. He soon wondered whether Wright's panties were unique in their ability, and as a result of this, he next attempted to steal the panties of "Little" Plum Kitaki. He got away with his crime, but as he stole across People Park with panties in hand, he witnessed Wocky Kitaki threatening Pal Meraktis with a gun. Stickler shouted for them to stop, a shot rang out, and Meraktis crumpled. Stickler, believing he had just seen Wocky shoot Meraktis, stuffed the panties in a nearby trash can and ran off to call the police.

Wocky stood trial the next day, with Stickler providing testimony as an eyewitness. However, Stickler altered his testimony to make it seem like he had been on the other side of the two people, in order to disassociate himself from the panties, which he had not yet retrieved. Wocky's defense lawyer Apollo Justice was able to figure this out, thanks in part to Plum's panties, which he had discovered while investigating. Faced with solid proof, Stickler confessed his crimes, but this now put a gigantic hole in the prosecution's case, namely that as Stickler's testimony stood, he had shouted out to the two men, Meraktis had turned his head toward Stickler, and had then been supposedly shot by Wocky. The autopsy report corroborated this, as it showed that Meraktis had been shot in his right temple, which fit perfectly with Stickler's line of events. However, after Justice made his deduction, things no longer made sense. Stickler had been standing on the opposite side, and so Meraktis should have turned in that direction. Justice presented the radical theory that someone had been lying in wait inside the noodle cart, which Meraktis had been pulling at his time of death, and shot the doctor.

Justice eventually identified Wocky's fiancée, Alita Tiala, as the real killer. Justice read her tell and found out that she had been strangled by Meraktis and then placed inside the noodle cart. He went on to present several pieces of evidence proving that Tiala had shot Meraktis. Wocky was declared not guilty, and Stickler continued to study science, declaring himself the cure to curiosity.

"Ivy University" may be a reference to the Ivy League, a group of eight private institutions of higher education in the Northeastern United States. It may also be a reference to the poison ivy, a poisonous North American and Asian flowering plant that causes itching, irritating, and sometimes painful rash in most people who touch it; this could be a reference to Dahlia Hawthorne's theft and use of poison from the university's Pharmacology Department.

In the French version of the game, the university is called Université Henri Beaucout. It comes from the expression "on rit beaucoup", which means "we laugh a lot". The use of the name "Henri" might also come from the Lycée Henri IV, one of the best-known high schools in France.